International Mobile Telecommunications (IMT) for 2020 and beyond (e.g., IMT 2020) is envisaged to expand and support diverse families of usage scenarios and applications that will continue beyond the current IMT. Furthermore, a broad variety of capabilities may be tightly coupled with these different usage scenarios. Example families of usage scenarios include enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB), Ultra-Reliable and Low Latency Communications (URLLC), massive Machine Type Communications (mMTC), and Network Operations. Example operating characteristics of eMBB may include macro and small cells, 1 ms Latency (air interface), support for high mobility, etc. Example operating characteristics of URLLC may include low to medium data rates (e.g., 50 kbps-10 Mbps), less than 1 ms air interface latency, 99.999% reliability and availability, low connection establishment latency, 0-500 km/h mobility, etc. Example mMTC operating characteristics may include low data date (e.g., 1-100 kbps), high density of devices (e.g., 200,000/km2), varying latency, low power required (e.g., up to 15 years battery autonomy), asynchronous access, etc. Network operations address various subjects such as Network Slicing, Routing, Migration and Interworking, Energy Saving, etc.
With respect to New Radio (NR) requirements, 3GPP TR 38.913 defines scenarios and requirements for New Radio (NR) technologies. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for URLLC and mMTC devices are summarized in Table 1 below:
TABLE 1KPIs for URLLC and mMTC DevicesDeviceKPIDescriptionRequirementURLLCControl PlaneControl plane latency refers to the time to move from10msLatencya battery efficient state (e.g., IDLE) to start ofcontinuous data transfer (e.g., ACTIVE).Data PlaneFor URLLC the target for user plane latency for UL0.5msLatencyand DL. Furthermore, if possible, the latency shouldalso be low enough to support the use of the nextgeneration access technologies as a wireless transporttechnology that can be used within the nextgeneration access architecture.ReliabilityReliability can be evaluated by the success1-10−5probability of transmitting X bytes NOTE1 within 1 ms,within 1 ms.which is the time it takes to deliver a small datapacket from the radio protocol layer 2/3 SDU ingresspoint to the radio protocol layer 2/3 SDU egress pointof the radio interface, at a certain channel quality(e.g., coverage-edge).NOTE1: Specific value for X is FFS.mMTCCoverage“Maximum coupling loss” (MCL) in uplink and164dBdownlink between device and Base Station site(antenna connector(s)) for a data rate of [X bps],where the data rate is observed at the egress/ingresspoint of the radio protocol stack in uplink anddownlink.UE BatteryUser Equipment (UE) battery life can be evaluated15yearsLifeby the battery life of the UE without recharge. FormMTC, UE battery life in extreme coverage shall bebased on the activity of mobile originated datatransfer consisting of [200 bytes] Uplink (UL) perday followed by [20 bytes] Downlink (DL) fromMaximum Coupling Loss (MCL) of [tbd] dB,assuming a stored energy capacity of [5 Wh].ConnectionConnection density refers to total number of devices106Densityfulfilling specific Quality of Service (QoS) per unitdevices/km2area (per km2). QoS definition should take intoaccount the amount of data or access requestgenerated within a time t_gen that can be sent orreceived within a given time, t_sendrx, with x %probability.
System Information (SI) is the information broadcast by the Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network (E-UTRAN) that needs to be acquired by a UE so that the UE can access and operate within the network. SI is divided into the MasterInformationBlock (MIB) and a number of SystemInformationBlocks (SIBs). A high level description of the MIB and SIBs is provided in 3GPP TS 36.300. Detailed descriptions are available in 3GPP TS 36.331. Examples of SI is shown in Table 2 below.
TABLE 2System InformationInformationBlockDescriptionMIBDefines the most essential physical layer information of the cell required toreceive further system informationSIB1Contains information relevant when evaluating if a UE is allowed to access a celland defines the scheduling of other system informationSIB2Radio resource configuration information that is common for all UEsSIB3Cell re-selection information common for intra-frequency, inter-frequency and/orinter-RAT cell re-selection (i.e. applicable for more than one type of cell re-selection but not necessarily all) as well as intra-frequency cell re-selectioninformation other than neighboring cell relatedSIB4Neighboring cell related information relevant only for intra-frequency cell re-selectionSIB5Information relevant only for inter-frequency cell re-selection i.e. informationabout other E UTRA frequencies and inter-frequency neighboring cells relevantfor cell re-selectionSIB6Information relevant only for inter-RAT cell re-selection i.e. information aboutUTRA frequencies and UTRA neighboring cells relevant for cell re-selectionSIB7Information relevant only for inter-RAT cell re-selection i.e. information aboutGERAN frequencies relevant for cell re-selectionSIB8Information relevant only for inter-RAT cell re-selection i.e. information aboutCDMA2000 frequencies and CDMA2000 neighboring cells relevant for cell re-selectionSIB9Home eNB name (HNB Name)SIB10ETWS primary notificationSIB11ETWS secondary notificationSIB12CMAS notificationSIB13Information required to acquire the MBMS control information associated withone or more MBSFN areasSIB14EAB parametersSIB15MBMS Service Area Identities (SAI) of the current and/or neighboring carrierfrequenciesSIB16Information related to GPS time and Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)SIB17Information relevant for traffic steering between E-UTRAN and WLANSIB18Indicates E-UTRAN supports the Sidelink UE information procedure and maycontain sidelink communication related resource configuration informationSIB19Indicates E-UTRAN supports the Sidelink UE information procedure and maycontain sidelink discovery related resource configuration informationSIB20Contains the information required to acquire the control information associatedtransmission of MBMS using SC-PTM
Turning now to UE information states, a UE can be in different states after powering up—“Idle” or “Packet Communication” as shown in FIG. 1, which are fully managed by EPS Mobility Management (EMM), EPS Connection Management (ECM), and the Radio Resource Control (RRC) functions. The details are summarized in Table 3, FIG. 2, and Table 4.
TABLE 3UE in EMM, ECM and RRC statesCaseStateUEeNBS-GWP-GWMNEHSSPCRFSPRAEMM-Deregistered +————————ECM-Idle + RRC-IdleBEMM-Deregistered +————TAI ofMME——EMC-Idle + RRC-Idlelast TAUCEMM-Registered +—Cell/eNBCell/eNBCell/eNBCell/eNBMMECell/eNB—ECM-ConnectedDEMM-Registered +——TAI ofTAI ofTAI ofMMETAI of—ECM-Idle + RRC-Idlelast TAUlast TAUlast TAUlast TAU
TABLE 4UE Location Information Set in Each EPS EntityCaseStateUEeNBS-GWP-GWMNEHSSPCRFSPRAEMM-Deregistered +————————ECM-Idle + RRC-IdleBEMM-Deregistered +————TAI ofMME——EMC-Idle + RRC-Idlelast TAUCEMM-Registered +—Cell/eNBCell/eNBCell/eNBCell/eNBMMECell/eNB—ECM-ConnectedDEMM-Registered +——TAI ofTAI ofTAI ofMMETAI of—ECM-Idle + RRC-Idlelast TAUlast TAUlast TAUlast TAU
More example details are shown in FIG. 3, which shows an example RRC_IDLE and RRC_CONNECTED state. With respect to the RRC_IDLE state, there is no RRC context in the Radio Access Network (RAN), and the UE does not belong to a specific cell. No data transfer may take place in RRC_IDLE. A UE is in a low-power state and listens to control traffic (control channel broadcasts), such as paging notifications of inbound traffic and changes to the system information. In RRC_IDLE, a given UE may first synchronize itself to the network by listening to the network broadcasts, and then may issue a request to the RRC to be moved to the “connected” state to establish the RRC context between the RAN and the UE. In LTE-Advanced, the target time was further reduced to 50 ms.
With respect to the RRC_CONNECTED state, there is an RRC context and resource assignment for a UE. The cell to which the UE belongs is known and an identity of the UE (the Cell Radio-Network Temporary Identifier (C-RNTI)), which is used for signaling purposes between the UE and the network, has been configured. In RRC_CONNECTED, the UE is in a high-power state and is ready to transmit to, or receive data from, the Evolved Node B (eNB). Discontinuous Reception (DRX) is used to conserve UE power in RRC-CONNECTED. In some cases, each radio transmission, no matter how small, forces a transition to a high-power state. Then, once the transmission is done, the radio will remain in this high-power state until the inactivity timer has expired. The size of the actual data transfer does not influence the timer. Further, the device may then also have to cycle through several more intermediate states before it can return back to idle. It is recognized herein that the “energy tails” generated by the timer-driven state transitions, as shown in FIG. 4, make periodic transfers a very inefficient network access pattern on mobile networks.